We May be Criminals, but we've got gum disease under control.

I'm heading for Seattle on Thursday, be gone for a few weeks. The admirable SIL has assured me he can whip my computer into compliance, and it will be my obedient slave.

So, till then, I'll leave you with the headline from the local paper today. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

FLEECED FLOSS
A teen duo is accused of trying to steal 18 packs of dental floss.
Police say the 16-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl also shoplifted yoga pants, Slim Jims and gum. They were cited for theft from Walmart Monday and released to their parents.

I live in an odder place than you.

My favorite bookstore, and my favorite restaurant

It was founded by this guy. Some might recognize him.

The bookstore is catty-corner across the wide street from my favorite restaurant. I first went there with Cary in '71, they had abelone the size of salad plates, gently sauteed, and sand dabs to die for. The co-owner, Lorenzo Petroni recently passed on. He saw my daughter grow up on our frequent visits for 15 years.

Anybody been to either?

Ok, here's what we need.

You, all 37 of you under the best circumstances. Nearly 0.0000000007 percent of the US population, so I have an audience. So listen up.  Yeah, I might have left a couple zero's out, nevermind that.

Writer pauses here, hoping people will pay more attention than his kids did, Realizes this is a futile hope, wonders how much beer is in the fridge

Here it is: We need someone to comment on the news, in the blogs we frequent, daily. Or at least every couple days. Ok, once a week would work. But someone. You, yeah you out there! I'm talking to you. Do it. Feature the top stuff, put your spin on it. The small stuff too. We'll not criticize, or at least not much. Ok, there might be a few 'suggestions', or possible 'alterations' to the piece you might have made, but it's all made in a helpful way. "You fucking idiot' can be spun several ways, eh?

So one of you, step up. Don't think of yourself as a sacrificial lamb, please. I'm assured the readers will whisper kind things in your ear as they draw the razor across your throat.

Some suggestions for you, as that guy in black and white said, Rod what's his name... "For your consideration"....things to offer your opinion on:

From the NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/opinion/pregnant-and-no-civil-rights.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

Or here, from a blogger I found through another, a good outdoor blog. It's interesting to wonder about her, and the blog. It's just one of many posts, she has time to write a lot.
http://mausersandmuffins.blogspot.com/2014/10/posts-from-road-danger-real-and.html

What I'm interested in is your opinions, what you think.

Abortion?

Racial differences, real or imagined? If so, what does that mean?

Can I just quit trying, or is this something that has some legs, if short ones?

It's starting winter here, nothing else to do. Give me some slack.

River: The Birds

There are birds here.
I hold in my heart an absolute sorrow for birds, a sorrow so deep that at the first light of day when I shiver like reeds fluttering in a cold fall wind I do not know whether it is from the cold or from the sorrow. Whether I am even capable of feeling such kindness. Perhaps I am. The herons have taught me that.

One rainy winter dawn I stood beneath gray clouds with my arms up stretched, dripping in my cotton shirt (it was clear earlier, I did not heed the wind), staring at the sand at my feet, when I felt the birds alight. I first felt the flutter of golden plovers against my head, then black turnstones landing softly on my arms. The red phalarope with their wild artic visions, fighting the wind to land, prickling my shoulders with their needling grip. Their delicate bones denying the weight of anguish I felt from the journeys these birds had come.

Beneath the weight I recalled the birds of my childhood. I had killed a robin with a new BB gun. I thought the name of the kittiwake funny. Later, much later in life when my father died I wondered if the remaining uncles would want his fly rods. I coveted then in cold contradiction to my grief. Feeling watched I turned from his bed in the ICU and saw ravens watching me, perched on the bare branches of a cottonwood. They waited.

I became tired beyond the limits of what was capable, and lay on the sand, damp but warm.

When I awoke the sky had cleared. In the damp sea air I could smell cedar smoke, a cabin just up the mouth of the river. I felt from here I could see far, up to the headwaters. The plovers had told me what the herons do at night, what the tears they shed added to the mingled memories and guilt's of the people living along the river equaled.

The herons have tried to teach me, but I am still incapable of absorbing what they have to offer. I watch one across the river, just before the reeds on the other bank. Perhaps you know it is raining. The intensity of your stare is then not oblivion, only an effort to spot between the rain drops in the river, past your feet, the movement of small trout.

I know, your way is to be inscrutable. When pressed you leave, the dark grey of your wings fading into the mist. I wonder about the way you seem to brood about the water. Is it more than fish? Do you wonder what your tears have become, have transformed as they flowed downstream?

A dream, like all of my dreams, reveal something but not all. The dream told me that someday we will dance together. Before then I will have to become a trout, and bear scars from your stabbing, rare, misses.

Tuscany, south of Firenze

Cuttlefish Pasta is a fine dish, try it sometime.

Late Thursday errata

Just some things I have hanging around.

When I worked in Germany my secretary was a young woman, just completed university, looking for an opening in their version of graduate school. I talk to her a couple times a year, her english is good though she denies it. She was demanding, unusual in a secretary, precise, abrasive to those she considered less than competent, and just a hoot to observe.

Here she is with her current boyfriend, vacationing. She's just graduated from their medical school, easily as rigorous as ours.Meet Brigit.

I talked to my youngest, Emily tonight. She's going to a Halloween party tomorrow with her boyfriend Jeremy, said she'd send me a pic of her costume. Very unclear that I'll put it here, after the incident with her costume in the role in Cabaret, wherin I spoke sharply to two teen boys who were commenting on it...

Got our second Winter Warm Storm warning here of the year, it's damn near November and we've had one measurable snow. One. This may seem odd to some in warmer climes, but more often than not I have snow in my yard, not to leave till May, by this time. Tomorrow is halloween, and the kids panhandling for treats will be wearing light coats, if any.  Here's the article in today's local rag:
Matt Hoffman matt.hoffman@mtstandard.com

(0) Comments

No need to create a Halloween costume that incorporates snow boots this year. Temperatures will approach record highs on Friday.
Butte is projected to hit a high of 63 degrees, just short of the all-time record of 66 degrees set in 2008. The entire month of October has been warmer than usual; so far the month’s average high temperature is 60.3 degrees.
In past years, a polar bear costume might have been a good choice. A record low of 11 degrees below zero was set in 2002, and a storm in 1973 dumped 12.8 inches of snow.

As I said, it's fall here. I was out to the Big Hole last week, fished for a bit but it was nippy, and my fingers got numb.

So, fight the good fight, vote correctly, and shrug off defeats.

And the beat goes on.....

Another school shooting in Seattle, the third in the last two years. Since 2010, these type of shootings, killings, have increased threefold in the US.

I read an article in the Seattle Times this morning, the most recent update at the time. Then I went to the comments, at that point there were 714. The first, last and 90% of those between were variations on 'it isn't guns' , 'it's our morals', etc. Most were laced with 'this is just another example of the liberals trying to disarm us.'

The current rate, nationally, is one like this every three weeks. So, 18 days and counting.

I read a column in the NY Times today, the writer made the point that even if we instituted much more stringent gun control laws little would change for 5 years, and it would take decades to match the statistics of deaths per populations of Europe. Yet, they did it. We're saying that this is acceptable, the deaths of our children, it's an acceptable loss.

What I'm saying here is nothing less than a Canadian/UK/Germany/Japan style of gun control will actually work. Handguns need to be under such strict control as to be almost impossible to possess. It will take decades, decades. But if not us, who? If not now, when? (I feel I can use RFK's words, I was 15 feet from him listening to his words 6 hours before he was killed).

Yet, here we are, unable to have banned assault weapons that have no purpose except to kill lots of people quickly. Two years since Sandy Hook, and here we are. So just wait, less than three weeks.